December 2011 ~ Loving Your Work

Loving
Your Work

Do you love what you do all day? Many people would say "NO"
emphatically. Why?

I’m going to challenge each person who reads this and say that if you don’t
love what you are doing, why in the world are you doing it?

Most people forget that they have choices how to view the world. We can
wake up and be happy to see the sunshine or the rain or the clouds or the snow
or whatever is going on outside. Or, we can wake up and feel trapped or
miserable or discouraged by imaginary problems.

We can look around us and see beauty, joy and happiness. Or, we can
look around and see misery, unhappiness or unfulfilled promise.

Regardless of what our situation is, we have a choice every single day how to
feel about our world, our work, our individual situation and our life.

If we choose to feel happy, our energy is lifted up and we can tackle any job
with vim and vigor. We can look around us at our workplace and see all the
beautiful people that are surrounding us.

We can find joy in the simple pleasures of helping someone or producing
something or or creating something or resolving some type of problem. We can face each new day with
wonder, expecting good things to happen. Or, we can complain or make ourselves miserable or choose to see only the
negative side of life.

Every day, we make those choices – how to see our world — unconsciously.
Every single day, we renew our commitment to live a life of happiness or to live one of
misery.

If we start to be consciously aware of our thoughts and feelings and actions,
we can realize that we have so many choices all day about how we will DO something or how we will
THINK when encountering someone or how we FEEL about
something. We have those CHOICES available to us every single day, every
single minute of our lives.

We can choose to put a smile on our face when we greet a customer or a
co-worker or a manager or a client or a patient or anyone else that might be in
our work-world or our personal life. We can choose to put a smile on our
face before we pick up the phone. We can choose to write emails filled
with good news and positive messages.

We can choose to know that this day we are living will be a good day.

We can choose to be grateful for every single experience that comes our way
– giving us a chance to show off our talents, to share our gifts with others,
to learn something new, to make new friends, to feel more alive, to forgive
someone, to forget something that has bothered us, to lift our spirits and to
lift the spirits of someone else who has forgotten how to do that.

We can choose to experience our life as awake and aware human beings.
Or, we can make other choices.

Whatever we choose, that is how our day will be, how our month will be, how our
year will be and how our life will be. This is YOUR life - you created it
so why not enjoy it to the very fullest?

Earl Nightingale in his recording, The
Strangest Secret, reminds us that whatever we focus on, expands. So if
we have positive thoughts, they expand and our experience becomes even more
positive. Or, if we have negative thoughts, they also expand and make our
experience more negative.

On this last month of 2011, how will you choose to spend your time – in joy
and happiness and gratitude, or otherwise? Are you willing to stop complaining
for the month and try choosing happiness every single day – just for a month?

When some event comes up that might have seemed disappointing or annoying in
the past, this month try to see it as a gift to be unwrapped and
enjoyed. Keep working until you can tap into the excitement of
finding the good parts of it to be enjoyed. Practice changing something
"disappointing" into something "wonderful."

This quote from Steve Jobs is a powerful reminder of what is possible for
each of us:

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and
asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do
what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” too
many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

We wish you a joyful
December and know that happiness is possible for everyone who makes that
choice.

Where talents and the needs of the world cross, therein lies your
vocation. ... Aristotle – Greek Philosopher

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your
work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of
your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is
great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you
do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t
settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find
it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as
the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t
settle. ... Steve Jobs – Founder of Apple Computer, NeXT, and Pixar
Animation Studios, Commencement
Speech Delivered at Stanford University, 2005

Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.
... Confucius – Social Philosopher and Teacher

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece ... John
Ruskin – Art Critic and Social Activist

The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s really a
different kind of life. ... Buckminster Fuller – Engineer, Author,
Designer, Inventor, and Futurist

Work is love made visible. ... Kahlil Gibran

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